The intermediary effect of the producer-supplier relational norms on the relationship between resource dependence parameters and company performance

The main purpose of this research is to investigate how the resource dependency parameters of the firms influence the producer-supplier relationship, and to investigate the relationship between the resource dependency parameters and the relational norms and the firm performance between the producer and the supplier, based on the theories of resource dependence and transaction costs. The study examines how some organizational parameters affect firm performance in terms of both transaction costs and resource dependency theory. In the literature, there is a study on how resource dependency parameters affect the relational norms between producer and supplier in similar studies. However, this study investigates how parameters of resource dependency and transaction costs theory affect performance, for the first time with this research. The universe of research constitutes business managers who work in different sub-sectors in the manufacturing sector while its sample constitutes 314 executives working in these sectors between May and December 2017. Face-to-face and individual questionnaire methods were used to collect research data. Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyzes were conducted to investigate the separation of the observed variables into the theoretically predicted factor components and to demonstrate the validity and reliability of the scales. Then the research model and related hypotheses were tested by means of Structural Equation Modeling technique. As a result of the study, it has been observed that the relationship norms between the producer-supplier have an intermediary role in the relationship of original assets and technological uncertainty with firm performance. This result has shown that firm performance can be improved by developing effective and useful relationships with manufacturers and suppliers of companies that develop unique assets on the general and operational level. It is also emphasized that strengthening the relations between firms in sectors where technological uncertainty prevails can improve firm performance by the effect of win-win strategy. In the study, these results are presented in detail.